There is a severe and immediate problem in the general public today of acquiring skin cancer such as melanoma and basal cell carcinoma. Nearly 30% of those acquiring melanoma die from the disease. The principal effective prevention of this deadly disease is protective clothing or sunscreen. Nearly everyone is at risk especially people of European decent. While sunscreen provides various degrees of protection, it is difficult to control its application because the application is done by individuals under different conditions. Sunscreens are temporary by nature, and need to be applied in intervals ranging from minutes to hours. Obviously, a device and a method that will provide a more complete, more permanent, and a more uniform method of protection are highly desirable.
Sun light and environmental factors can also be a significant factor in the aging of the skin. Here again, uniform, reliable and permanent protection are very difficult to achieve.
Skin color and tanning are problems for the cosmetics and beauty industry. Methods that would provide safe tanning or other modification of skin color would be of high economic and social importance. Unfortunately, permanent or semi-permanent skin color changes are very difficult to achieve, and in the prior art can be accomplished only at high expense, and with very limited efficacy. Conventional tanning methods are less expensive, are temporary, but carry significant health hazards.
Enhanced insulation of the skin from thermal energy fluctuations is also highly desirable. To date, principally clothing and gloves are used for such protection. In some cases, swimmers may use oils and ointment to enhance insulation. These methods and devices are obviously temporary in nature and provide only external insulation that can be removed by environmental influences and does not change the intrinsic properties of the skin. Certainly, swimmers, sailors, people in cold regions of the country, people who often work outside in extreme temperature and weather conditions, people who need to operate equipment in cold or hot conditions but need to preserve the agility and flexibility of their hands or feet operation (for example, soldiers who need to operate weapons under extreme cold or hot temperatures and are severely restricted by the cover of gloves), could all benefit from such thermal insulation.
Enhanced insulation from electrical influences is also desirable in many circumstances. The only methods or devices presently available that protect a target, and in particular the human body and human or animal or plant skin from external electrical influences are electrical insulating material applied to the surface of the skin or by simply keeping the skin dry from conducting liquid.
Excessive skin sensitivity is yet another condition that affects many people in the United States as well as the rest of the world. People with high skin sensitivity may need to take pain medication that may have harmful side effects and unintended as well as undesired effects on other organs. Again, external insulation that insulated the skin from mechanical, thermal chemical or electrical stimulation can be used to create a vacuum or insulating layers around the skin. But devices and methods that would directly and effectively modify the skin properties are highly desirable. What is needed are ways of permanently or semi-permanently changing the mechanical, thermal and chemical properties of the skin or other targets, such as by placing a layer or subsurface zone between the surface of the skin and the nerve ending to absorb shocks, mechanical pressure stress and strains, or mechanical vibrations. What is also needed are ways of disabling the nerve endings in the skin, which would mechanically, electrically or chemically interfere with the nerve-generated signal, and prevent it from traveling down the nervous system to create the sensation of pain.
Controlled and continuously delivery of drugs, medicines, nutrients, vitamins and other supplements constitute still other areas that are poorly satisfied by prior art methods and apparatuses. For example, patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus depend on external insulin (most commonly injected subcutaneously) for their survival because of an absolute deficiency of the hormone. Patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus have insulin resistance, relatively low insulin production, or both, and some type 2 diabetics eventually require insulin when other medications become insufficient in controlling blood glucose levels. Other than insulin pumps, the most common way for treating diabetes is for insulin to be injected into a patient, which over the long haul can cause all sorts of problems. What is needed is a way to intrinsically and permanently or semi-permanently modify the upper layers of the skin to create a permanent or semi-permanent zone for storage of such medically beneficial substances as insulin.
Considering the above, there is clearly an urgent need for a device and method for modifying a substance, and in particular the skin so it can preventing hazardous and undesirable external influences from entering deeper layers, in particular deeper layers of the skin and body. In particular, there is an urgent need for protection of the skin and body from harmful radiation and damaging sunlight. Such protection would both inhibit premature aging and more importantly, would reduce the risk of contracting skin cancer. Certain types of skin cancers such as melanoma are especially deadly and have very low survival rates.
In short, there is still a very significant need for safe and effective, long term subsurface skin modifications that have little or no collateral or health repercussions.